


Extenuating Circumstances

by HPsmartone32



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Magical Bond, Multiple Pov, background al/scorp probably, this fic is purely me amusing myself
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 04:32:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16695493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HPsmartone32/pseuds/HPsmartone32
Summary: Looking back, Teddy realizes he should have known something like this would happen. He should have taken the first, oh, fifty or so signs that pointed towards a really shit day, thanked the universe for the heads up, and gone back to bed. But, oblivious as he is when it comes to his own life, he didn’t. And now he’s bound by some ancient magic to Albus Potter.Or:Al and Teddy get hit with a binding potion that not even the experts have heard of before. Albus is amused. Teddy’s annoyed. James totally isn’t jealous. Because that would be insane.





	Extenuating Circumstances

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this instead of studying because the idea wouldn't leave me alone and i have no self control.
> 
> it'll be two, maybe three, chapters at most. 
> 
> it has not been edited, so sorry/not sorry if it's rough around the edges.

* * *

 

**DAYS 1 & 2 **

 

Looking back, Teddy Lupin realizes he should have known something like this would happen. He should have taken the first, oh, fifty or so signs that pointed towards a really shit day, thanked the universe for the heads up, and gone the fuck back to bed. But, oblivious as he is when it comes to his own life, he didn’t. And now he’s bound by some ancient magic to Albus Potter.

 

To the point: on the first Monday of October, Teddy’s day started off bad and only got worse.

 

 

_James was looking at him, his freckles a deep brown in the fading sunlight, and his blue eyes sparkling under auburn hair. “I’m seeing someone,” he told Teddy, smiling happily._

_The air rushed out of Teddy’s chest. He tried to get it back in, but it felt solid now, uncooperative with its job to keep Teddy’s lungs inflated. “What?” he managed, somehow._

_James grinned at him again, a beautiful thing if there ever was one, and opened his mouth. A loud, incessant screeching noise came out. Teddy grew increasingly concerned, as James’ mouth opened and closed around the screeching, beeping noise and –_

Teddy jerked awake, half-panicked, and finally identified the sound as his alarm. He sat up and waved a hand at it from across the room, heartbeat still in his ears, and felt a sense of victory when he heard the alarm clock smash onto the floor and then silence.

 

He fell back onto his pillow and rolled so his face was pressed into it, the darkness pressing on his eyelids. James’ face swam out of the darkness and Teddy’s chest twisted again.

 

It was just a dream. James wasn’t seeing anyone, Teddy knew this for certain because James had recently told him.

 

Regardless of James’ dating life, Teddy shouldn’t be having dreams about him. He shouldn’t want to tell James that he didn’t want him to see anyone else ever again, that he wanted to run his fingers through that damn auburn hair so much that sometimes he sat on his hands to make sure he behaved himself. Really, at the root of it all, he shouldn’t be at least half in love with his godfather’s kid, one of his best mates, and someone who almost definitely saw him as an older brother.

 

Teddy groaned into his pillow before pushing himself up and out of bed. The screeching alarm clock meant that he had thirty minutes to get showered, dressed, and into work before Harry came by to distribute new cases.

 

He stubbed his toe on the dresser on his way to the bathroom. It hurt like fuck, but the loud stream of curse words he let out did make him feel a bit better overall.

 

 

*

 

Albus Potter was having a great morning.

 

He had woken up on his own, two minutes before his alarm went off, with the back of a fit bloke he’d pulled the night before pressed against his chest. He silenced his alarm with a lazy wave of his wand, tossed the wand back on the bedside table, then turned his attention back to his bed. He was warm, this bloke – _Omar? Amir? Something like that_ – and Al’s arm was resting low across his hips.

 

Al ran a hand up his side and felt him – _Omar, definitely Omar, Al was 90% sure_ – stir. Omar rolled over and grinned. It was a grin that promised that all sorts of filthy things would happen before Al had to leave for work. It was a grin Al liked very much; he had an hour and a half before he had to be in to work, anyway.

 

 

 

In a not-so-funny turn of events, Al had learned that the bloke’s name was Samaan while they were in the shower for round two. Unsurprisingly, Samaan had not taken well to Al calling him Omar and had left both the shower and his flat pretty quickly after that.

 

But Al was still having a great morning. Once he was dressed, he decided to walk to work. It was sunny out today and the early October air was crisp and cool, just the way Al preferred. He stopped into his favorite bakery and the bloke behind the counter gave him a discount and a wink.

 

When he arrived at the Ministry, it was five minutes until nine and he managed to get into a lift that wasn’t packed full of smelly older wizards. He sipped his coffee and thought about his workload for the day.

 

Al worked in the potions division of the Department of Mysteries, and they had recently acquired a shipment of new potions to analyze. His intern should have been organizing them starting at eight this morning, so hopefully there would be a few ready for Al to investigate when he arrived.

 

When he exited the lift, he saw a figure standing at the end of the long hall. Squinting, he could make out the pale blue hair of his godbrother.

 

“What brings an Auror to this side of the Ministry?” Al asked as he approached.

 

Teddy looked up from the floor and grinned half-heartedly at him, “Rumor has it that you just received a shipment of illegal potions.”

 

“Rumor’s not meant to have anything about what I may or may not have received,” Al pointed out, walking past Teddy and pulling open the door to the main Department of Mysteries vestibule.

 

“Rumor’s name is _Your Father_ and what it has is _A Message from Your Aunt, the Minister of Magic,_ and I’ve just missed out on a very exciting case so that we can keep this _within the family_ ,” Teddy followed him in and shut the door behind him.

 

The walls spun until Al took out his wand and waved it in a preset pattern. The walls stopped and the door to their left sprung open.

 

“I can’t believe today is the day they want me to break protocol,” Al sighed, walking into the Potions Department office. “I’ve had a great morning so far, and I’d not like to have it end with me getting sacked.”

 

“Well, I’ve had a shit morning and you know I hate being down here, so the quicker you let me search your stock for the potion I was told about, the better it’ll be for both of us,” Teddy explained, still following Al through the long entrance hall.

 

Al looked over his shoulder at him. Teddy did look a little worse for the wear.

 

“Fine,” he acquiesced. He put his hand on his laboratory door to unlock it and threw it open. “But only because you look a bit pathetic this morning and –”

 

“ _Al!_ ”

 

Al didn’t know how Teddy saw it so quickly, but Teddy rushed forward, grabbed his arm, and tried to pull him out of the way. A rather large jar of potion sitting haphazardly on the shelf above the door was already halfway through the air by the time Al realized what was happening. He only just had time to throw his other arm over his head and shut his eyes.

 

He felt the jar shatter against his forearm. He felt the potion trickling through his hair and over his forehead. He blinked his eyes open to find that Teddy had been caught in the splash zone.

 

Then he felt it. The magic of the potion was seeping into him and he felt it spread from his head to his shoulders and down his spine. He felt the strongest traces of it speed down to his arm, the one that Teddy’s hand was still gripping, and it felt hot and explosive at the spot where their bodies met.

 

He met Teddy’s widened eyes and felt dizzy with the magic that was coursing through him. Everything felt golden somehow, white around the edges, and Teddy seemed to glow before his eyes.

 

Al took a deep breath, planning to ask what the fuck was happening. Teddy wrenched his hand back, still looking at Al with wide eyes. There was a split second when the magic around them was still, floating innocently, and then, like a rubber band, it snapped back into them _hard_ and everything went black.

 

 

*

 

James slept through most of the morning. His meetings with the team managers had run late the night before, and he’d gotten home around midnight completely knackered.

 

He woke up to someone calling his name from the Floo in the living room of his tiny one-bedroom flat. He’d been having a good dream, he thought, irritated, as he pulled on pajama bottoms. He was pretty sure Teddy had been in it.

 

James dragged his feet into the living room and saw his mother’s face in his fireplace, “‘Morning” he yawned.

 

“Al and Teddy were in an accident,” Ginny said, not one to beat around the bush.

 

James heartrate picked up instantly, “ _What_?” He hurried the rest of the way to the fireplace. “Are they okay? What –”

 

“They’re mostly fine. No one’s in mortal danger or anything, don’t worry.” Ginny assured him, but James didn’t like the worn and worried look on her face. “They’re at St. Mungo’s for now, if you want to drop by –”

 

“I’ll be there in 10.”

 

 

James pushed open the door to room 4019, finding it a bit odd that Teddy and Al had been put in the same small private room. His parents were there, sitting on one of the two hospital beds, while Teddy and Al lay close together on the other. Al was closest to their parents, laughing and on his back, and Teddy was on his side, head propped up on his hand with an amused expression on his face.

 

James was confused. Confused and something else that felt very hot in the pit of his stomach.

 

“James!” Teddy saw him first, when he noticed James’ expression, he frowned at him. Then the other three turned and smiled at him.

 

“What’s going on?” James said, dumbly, without thinking. He was still staring at the place where the lines of Al and Teddy’s bodies met. “I mean – are you two okay?”

 

Several things happened then, all of which confused James even more.

 

Al’s eyes went wide as he stared at James.

 

Teddy sat up, winced, and laid back down beside Al, pressing even closer than he had been before and throwing an arm over his waist.

 

His dad said, “They’re fine.” at the same time his mum told him, “They’re working on how to fix it.”

 

James felt very much like he would have an aneurysm if someone didn’t explain to him, preferably very quickly, why Teddy was spooning his little brother. He walked over to the bed that Teddy and Al were in and grabbed the bar at the end, his knuckles turning white as he saw exactly how close Al and Teddy were.

 

James blinked, and then, “What. The fuck. Is going on.”

 

“Teddy and I got bonded,” Al told him, still looking at him like _James_ was the one lying next to Teddy in a hospital bed with his goddamn arm around him.

 

“Bonded?”

 

“Accidentally,” Teddy quickly threw in, pulling his arm off of James’ brother and turning to look at him. “Walked under an _improperly stored potion_ and it fell on us.”

 

“I didn’t put it there, my idiot intern did!” Al said, finally looking away from James. “It’s not like I wanted an all access pass to your emotions, Lupin.”

 

“Emotions,” James repeated. Speaking of, he had so many of them right now. If he could just have some time, like a year or two, he definitely needed to pick his emotions out individually and examine what they might mean.

 

“The Healers are still trying to figure out the nature of the bond,” Harry pulled James’ gaze to him. “They’re working with the higher-up’s in Al’s department, too. It seems there was quite a bit of old magic in this potion. No one quite knows what we’re dealing with.”

 

“Which is a comfort to us, obviously,” Teddy muttered.

 

“Obviously.” James’ entire world felt unsteady. Everything he knew about bonding spells came back to him and the hot pit in his stomach rolled unpleasantly and threatened to eat its way up James’ throat. “Usually bonds only work between, like, couples – did this happen because you two –”

 

“Fucking hell” Al said, loudly. “ _No_ ,” Teddy said at the same time.

 

“Merlin, I’d rather shag Dad’s old boss, and he was missing half his face,” Al continued.

 

“Albus!” Ginny scolded.

 

Al turned to Teddy, “No offense, mate.”

 

“That’s not what I –” Ginny started.

 

“It’s not like the bonds of old pureblood culture,” Harry explained. “It seems to mostly be a proximity thing at the moment, with a bit of cerebral involvement. We’re hoping that when the bond is less fresh, they’ll be able to be farther apart.”

 

“No offense again, Ted, but if I can’t walk around without touching you in the next few hours I’m going to defenestrate myself.”

 

“Not funny,” Ginny and Harry said at the same time.

 

“Touching,” James’ brain was back on one-word responses now. He still felt mildly ill. He had a feeling that it might have something to do with the amount of time he spent thinking about touching Teddy and then having his brother say things like _that_ so casually.

 

“Yeah, if I stop touching Al, it feels like someone’s trying to stab a sword through my eye socket.”

 

“I’d describe it more as being clubbed in the head with a beater’s bat, myself,” Al said thoughtfully.

 

James was definitely going to vomit. Or scream. Or both?

 

Maybe he could hit himself with a beater’s bat.

 

James knew he was being a colossal arsehole right now in wanting to push Al off the bed and away from Teddy when they were in the fucking hospital, but that didn’t make the urge any less strong.

 

“They black out in about four seconds if they get idiotic and try to separate,” Ginny told him, shooting them a dark look.

 

“Just wanted to test it,” Teddy said, shrugging.

 

“I – okay. I’m glad you’re okay,” James said, and he was.

 

He met Teddy’s eyes and Teddy smiled at him, all warm and crinkled eyes and that dimple on only his right cheek. James felt his heart rate find a steady rhythm for the first time since he’d answered his Floo. He loosened his grip on the hospital bed.

 

“That’s a matter of opinion,” he heard Al mutter, and watched him rub his eyes with the palms of his hands. “God, how am I ever going to unthink this.”

 

“What?” Harry asked.

 

Al stopped rubbing. “Nothing, just getting flashes of Teddy’s emotions and it’s very intrusive and slightly inces–”

 

“Al, don’t roll over,” Teddy said suddenly, tearing his eyes from James.

 

“What?” Al brought his hands down.

 

“I just saw you fall off the bed,” Teddy said. “I don’t know how.”

 

“I’m not going to fall –” Al started haughtily, rolling over. The side of the bed held for all of a second before it snapped and Al tumbled to the floor.

 

Teddy’s hands immediately went to his head. Al cried out in agony.

 

Harry yelled for the Healer. Ginny moved to help Al.

 

James almost screamed in frustration as he moved to Teddy’s side of the bed.

 

 

*

 

Four steps.

 

Teddy could now go four steps away from Al without feeling like his brain was being drilled into the back of his skull.

 

He considered this a blessing.

 

It was the next night after the Potion Incident and Teddy and Al only just been discharged from St. Mungo’s. After a quick trip to Al’s place first to pack some basics, they arrived at Teddy’s slightly larger flat and Teddy steeled himself for cohabitation until this was all figured out.

 

Teddy couldn’t stop picturing James’ face as he stood at the end of the bed, looking at them. The expression there had been complicated and raw and Teddy was having a hard time naming it.

 

He could name the one he felt when James had rushed over and put his hands on Teddy’s arms though. It had happened right after Al fell off the bed and Teddy thought he was going to fucking _die_ from the pain and then James’ hands were there, on his arms, rubbing, and saying “oh my God” over and over and “it’s okay” and, in between all of the pain and the dying, Teddy felt warmth.

 

Then Ginny levitated Al back into bed and James had grabbed Teddy’s hand to put it on Al and the pain in his head stopped as suddenly as it had started. James took his hand away, and Teddy opened his eyes to watch it happen and a new ache opened up in his chest wide and cataclysmic.

 

James had stayed for as long as he was allowed, but he’d been uncharacteristically silent.

 

As it was nearly one in the morning, Al and Teddy danced their way around each other in their nighttime routine. Teddy tried to be accommodating, but Al seemed to vibrate at a different frequency and they kept getting in each other’s way, even four steps apart. Their elbows bumped when they brushed their teeth, they had to shower with the other one standing just on the other side of the curtain, and Teddy tripped over Al’s suitcase by the door, stubbing the same toe again.

 

“Sorry,” Al said, banishing his suitcase into the corner. “This is weird.”

 

“Yeah,” Teddy agreed, smiling at him. He reached over to ruffle his hair like he used to when Al was young. Al swatted his hand away, but smiled back.

 

“We’ll figure it out,” Teddy told him. “Honestly, I’m just grateful it’s not your intern I’m stuck with.”

 

“True, he’s awful.”

 

“Can I be there when you fire him?’

 

“Looks like you’ll have to be,” Al laughed, gesturing at the mere feet between them.

 

Teddy rolled his eyes, “I’m exhausted, let’s just sleep, yeah?”

 

The Healers and the Unspeakables had kept them up all of the night before, running tests and giving pain potions and trying to help. Nothing had worked, but they had all of the samples they needed to keep trying.

 

Al nodded, “Which side do you like?”

 

Teddy told him, and they crawled into bed. Al collapsed next to him, his black hair fanning out underneath him. He rubbed at his eyes as Teddy turned away from him and reached for the duvet.

 

Teddy felt Al shimmy under it and settle in. “Lights?” he asked and when Al nodded, he snapped his fingers. The lights in the room went off.

 

“I’ve always been jealous of your wandless magic,” Al said.

 

“Metamorphmagi have an easier time with it,” Teddy said. “We have more magic at the surface.”

 

“We learned that in our orientation rounds for the Department of Mysteries, actually,” Al said, curious. “Where’d you hear it?”

 

Teddy shrugged.

 

In truth, he’d heard it from an Unspeakable he’d dated briefly when he first started working at the Ministry, but he didn’t want to get anyone in trouble.

 

They lapsed into silence for long enough that Teddy thought Al had fallen asleep. There was steady, slow breathing coming from his side of the bed. Teddy, tired as he was, couldn’t turn his mind off.

 

He loved Al, he really did, but he wasn’t sure he could last very long _bonded_ to him. They got on well when they hung out, but that was very different from having someone around every minute of the day.

 

“Teddy?”

 

Teddy turned his head, saw the outline of Al, “Yeah?”

 

“James?” Al said, and Teddy didn’t need him to say anything else. The chasm in his chest opened a little wider at the sight of Al, his profile so like his brothers, lying on the pillow next to him.

 

“Yeah,” Teddy knew denying it was useless.

 

“I felt it from you,” Al said, and Teddy thought he might be pulling a face. “When he walked into the hospital room.”

 

“Sorry,” Teddy said, his face heating up.

 

“This is weird,” Al said again.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Not you and James,” Al said quickly, turning his head.

 

Teddy let out a small laugh, “It’s okay, I know it is.”

 

“It’s not. Not really,” Al said, turning back to stare at the ceiling. “I think I’m just little surprised I didn’t see it before I felt it.”

 

“Ugh,” Teddy cringed.

 

Al laughed, “Yeah, you’re telling me.”

 

They were silent again, though Teddy’s mind was louder than it’d ever been before.

 

Finally, what felt like hours later: “For what it’s worth, I think he’s into you, too,” Al said, his voice thick with sleep.

 

Teddy’s mind chased that sentence down every single rabbit hole it could find until, actual hours later, he finally fell asleep.


End file.
